Automotive
The “car-on-a-chip “is no longer science fiction.
One of the major trends in the automotive industry is the increasing number of electronic components used in cars, that represent today up to 20% of the vehicle value and will probably reach 30% in the next decade.
Each year, manufacturers have to market new cars with highly integrated electronic systems and at the same time provide their customers with the highest level of safety.
Nowadays micro controllers and CPUs can be found at the heart of almost any electronic control systems or ECU in production. Any failure of systems like the cruise, braking, stability control system or airbag system can be life threatening to the final user.
The aerospace industry has for a long time been aware of cosmic rays potential damages on electronics. But we now know that cosmic ray-induced soft errors don’t occur only in space but are a significant threat at ground level.
Because cars need to be highly reliable at any time, in any kind of environment, at any altitude, the soft error issue has to be addressed and anticipated. The Automotive Electronics Council has included Soft Errors investigations in their design rules.
iRoC Technologies brings to the automotive industry the expertise and testing tools to measure, analyze and prevent system failures due to soft error in mission-critical devices.
Useful Articles and documents
Risk assessment in Automotive electronics:
The table bellow lists the major current electronic functions in automotive. In red are shown the critical applications where thorough investigation for Soft Error impact should be performed.
| Electronic Device | Failure Impact on vehicle | Sensitive to SE? |
| Sensors and Actuators | ||
| Pressure sensors, Linear and Angle Position Sensors, Flow Sensors, Temperature, eat and Humidity Sensors, Exhaust Gas Sensors, Speed and Acceleration Sensors, Engine Knock Sensors,Engine Torque Sensors, Actuators. | Failure of these sensors and actuators can impact the vehicle, but not in a dramatic way since control systems can deal with the failure. | Most of these sensors have little or no sensitivity to Soft Errors |
| Control Systems (microcontroller based) | ||
| Engine Control | Micro Controller based | |
| Transmission Control | ||
| Cruise Control | Failure can be dramatic | |
| Braking Control | ||
| Traction Control | ||
| Stability Control | Failure can be dramatic | |
| Suspension Control | ||
| Steering Control | ||
| Lighting, wipers, Air Conditioning | ||
| Display and Information Systems | ||
| Instrument Panel Display | ||
| On and off board diagnostics | ||
| Safety, Convenience, Entertainment, and Other systems | ||
| Passenger safety and convenience | Failure can be dramatic (airbag) | |
| Keyless entry and antitheft systems | ||
| Entertainment products | ||
| Emerging Technologies | ||
| Object Detection, Collision avoidance | Probably Sensitive to SE as amount of digital electronic needed is important | |
| Adaptive Cruise Control | Failure can be dramatic | |
| Navigation Aids and Information System | ||
How can iRoC help ?
As independent specialist of the topic, we offer a wide variety of solutions to run the risk assessment at the early design phase and validation in the pre marketing phase of the product. We can also run crash investigation program to give companies the best input so they can design the best recall strategy if needed. Please check our solutions here and contact us for specific questions.